SXMElections.com

PHILIPSBURG--Committee for Financial Supervision CFT will soon have a member from St. Maarten. Tipped for the post is Corporate Legal Expert Maria van der Sluijs-Plantz.

The St. Maartener, who lives in the Netherlands, has already served the country as the vice chairwoman of the first Corporate Governance Council (CGC) that was established in 2010. She serves as Vice Chairman of Strategic Development at TMF Group Holding BV, a company that focuses on corporate compliance. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

CFT Chairman Age Bakker said in a press conference on Thursday that a nominee to fill the vacant St. Maarten seat was “in the pipeline.” He did not give the name of the nominee to the press, saying that government would release such in the coming weeks.

The post for the St. Maarten member has stood vacant for almost a year, since the resignation of Attorney Richard Gibson in December 2014.

“We have removed our vacancy sign from our door,” Bakker jested, referring to his press conference earlier in the year when he said if the suitable candidate could not be found by the Marcel Gumbs Cabinet, CFT would put a vacancy sign outside its office in the Convent Building on Front Street.

Having a CFT member from St. Maarten is “especially important now,” Bakker said, pointing to CFT’s role to ensure government meets the stipulation of the targeted instruction to service its arrears to General Pension Fund APS and to Social and Health Insurance SZV.

“We are in difficult times,” he said about the instruction and government’s deadline of October 31 to meet the stipulations.